Office Visit
Let me just preface - while I did indeed go to the doctor’s office today, this entry is not, in fact, about my ills or my actual visit with my doctor. It is instead about the interesting people I have come to encounter in various waiting rooms over the years…
Classics:
The lady on her cell phone at the ob/gyn…telling her husband/boyfriend/parents/siblings/friends that she’s pregnant. Loudly.
The screaming baby - or screaming/running around/out of control small child.
The people who stare at you - because they don’t want to read any of the magazines, are bored, or who are just generally rude. Extra points if it’s the guy with the lazy eye.
The two that I ran across today - both of the “older” generation. I’m gonna say it - geriatric. The first was a man, into the office with his wife. He was altogether too chatty with the receptionist - who had to go along with the conversation so she wouldn’t seem rude. He seemed to not know what was going on, but he did. There’s notes everywhere clearly stating upon check-in you need to present your insurance card and pay your co-payment. The man joked, “Ha, ha, you don’t need to see my card (because I don’t want to get it out of my pocket for you).” He finally got it out, the girl goes to charge him the $10, and his wife pipes up, “Oh, it’s $15, that’s an old card.” Why are you still carrying an the old card with you? And why pay more if you didn’t have to? I’m sure the insurance company sent a new card already too, or you wouldn’t have known it was old!
The other person was a different lady sitting next to me. She’s got one of those hardcover special edition Life magazine things, and staring at the cover. While she looks at these little pictures, and jabs them loudly with her finger, as if recognizing old friends in a yearbook. I glanced over, and it looked like the same picture of JFK a bunch of times, but in different colors. But she just kept jabbin’ at them, totally distracting me from my reading.
I guess I should also point out that my visit was not to a general office where you would expect a wide variety of people, nor was it to the specialty of psychiatry, where one might expect to see this type of behavior, ie the crazies. Obviously I pick up on what other people are doing, but it’s only because they are so loud or rude about it. In general I try to mind my own business by keeping my nose buried in a book or magazine. All I can hope (for myself) is that I fade into the background of other people’s waiting room experiences. 
